Public, Private or Neither? Analysing the publicness of health care social enterprises

Abstract

Social enterprises have been actively encouraged to spin out of the National Health Service (NHS) on the grounds that they can deliver more innovative, cost-efficient and responsive services. This is arguably achieved through a combination of the best of the public, third and private sectors. This article explores this idea by bringing together empirical data from interviews with NHS spin-outs and a framework of ‘publicness’. By focusing on NHS spin-outs, we look at what happens to an organization’s publicness when it leaves the public sector yet continues to deliver publicly funded services.